No dishonesty, I typed in "zzz" first (and then pressed post). Then I typed in (as an edit):

"Don't you believe that the Universe formed by chance, or is it something else now?"

Then my Computer crashed!!

Ok fair enough, I'll retract that comment.

I have no idea what started the universe off in the first place. However, as far as can be determined, since that 'beginning' (or a few Planck instants after the 'beginning') it appears to have functioned entirely according to natural processes, of which we have varying degrees of understanding. Natural processes may be highly complex when you have a lot of parameters, but highly complex isn't the same as random. I'm not convinced that true randomness really exists on a large scale.

But could everything could have re-arranged itself so perfect? Could life have just formed by chance? is it possible. I don't think it is. I reckon God created everything. I can tell you for a fact that God is real - and He will appear on the day of judgement. The only thing that cannot be created and which has always existed can only be God. The Big Bang could have only happened if God supplied it. Other than that, it is impossible. My watch can't form by chance, even with it's complex structures which make it work. How can the Universe form by chance?? If it is impossible for a watch to form by chance, it sure is impossible for the Universe to form by chance and then re-arrange itself so we can live.

Perfect for what, or to whom? Perfection is subjective. One person's perfect ice-cream is another person's nut allergy.

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Could life have just formed by chance? is it possible. I don't think it is.

Don't ask me; as I've already said I do not consider 'chance' to be a significant factor in natural processes. I think that even using the term 'chance' is applying to nature a variable that may not even apply.

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I reckon God created everything. I can tell you for a fact that God is real - and He will appear on the day of judgement.

Try not to confuse your opinions with facts.

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The only thing that cannot be created and which has always existed can only be God.

Assertion not established.

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The Big Bang could have only happened if God supplied it. Other than that, it is impossible. My watch can't form by chance, even with it's complex structures which make it work. How can the Universe form by chance?? If it is impossible for a watch to form by chance, it sure is impossible for the Universe to form by chance and then re-arrange itself so we can live.

False analogy. We know watches to be manufactured because we manufacture them. The same cannot be said of the universe.

False analogy. We know watches to be manufactured because we manufacture them. The same cannot be said of the universe.

Why not? If he send miracles like rain (water from the sky) in such processes (the water cycle), why should we deny a higher being? of whom everywhere evidence exists. Creation requires a creator, God is the creator (of everything). There is 100% proof that life on Earth is intelligent. If man got together with all the technology and everything else, he wouldn't even be able to create a bee! not intelligent? oh, I think it is! The Universe has a creator, God doesn't. Because it's like saying "Who created the Un-creatobale", which obviously doesn't make sense. Humans have an amazing brain, but some decide to take it the wrong way. Some thank God for it.

LONDON - Albert Einstein: arch rationalist or scientist with a spiritual core?

A letter being auctioned in London this week adds more fuel to the long-simmering debate about the Nobel Prize-winning physicist's religious views. In the note, written the year before his death, Einstein dismissed the idea of God as the product of human weakness and the Bible as "pretty childish."

The letter, handwritten in German, is being sold by Bloomsbury Auctions on Thursday and is expected to fetch between $12,000 and $16,000.

Einstein, who helped unravel the mysteries of the universe with his theory of relativity, expressed complex and arguably contradictory views on faith, perceiving a universe suffused with spirituality while rejecting organized religion.

The letter up for sale, written to philosopher Eric Gutkind in January 1954, suggests his views on religion did not mellow with age.

In it, Einstein said that "the word God is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human weaknesses, the Bible a collection of honorable but still primitive legends which are nevertheless pretty childish."

"For me," he added, "the Jewish religion like all other religions is an incarnation of the most childish superstitions."

Addressing the idea that the Jews are God's chosen people, Einstein wrote that "the Jewish people to whom I gladly belong and with whose mentality I have a deep affinity have no different quality for me than all other people. As far as my experience goes, they are also no better than other human groups, although they are protected from the worst cancers by a lack of power. Otherwise I cannot see anything 'chosen' about them."

Bloomsbury spokesman Richard Caton said the auction house was "100 percent certain" of the letter's authenticity. It is being offered at auction for the first time, by a private vendor.

Quirky beliefsJohn Brooke, emeritus professor of science and religion at Oxford University, said the letter lends weight to the notion that "Einstein was not a conventional theist" — although he was not an atheist, either.

"Like many great scientists of the past, he is rather quirky about religion, and not always consistent from one period to another," Brooke said.

Born to a Jewish family in Germany in 1879, Einstein said he went through a devout phase as a child before beginning to question conventional religion at the age of 12.

In later life, he expressed a sense of wonder at the universe and its mysteries — what he called a "cosmic religious feeling" — and famously said: "Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind."

But he also said: "I do not believe in the God of theology who rewards good and punishes evil. My God created laws that take care of that. His universe is not ruled by wishful thinking, but by immutable laws."

Brooke said Einstein believed that "there is some kind of intelligence working its way through nature. But it is certainly not a conventional Christian or Judaic religious view."

Einstein's most famous legacy is the special theory of relativity, which makes the point that a large amount of energy could be released from a tiny amount of matter, as expressed in the equation e=mc2 (energy equals mass times the speed of light squared). The theory changed the face of physics, allowing scientists to make predictions about space and paving the way for nuclear power and the atomic bomb.

Einstein's musings on science, war, peace and God helped make him world famous, and his scientific legacy prompted Time magazine to name him its Person of the 20th Century.

"will appear"? Implying that he is not always in evidence? We are not constantly being judged?

I disagree. My god is the universe around us. Proof of its existence is our senses and experience. If I attempt to thwart one of its laws, I am instantly judged. There is no vengeance or jealousy as there is with Yahweh/Allah, only cold ruthless impartial truth. If I jump off a cliff, God's law of gravity will pull me down.

Logged

I stopped believing for a little while this morning. Journey is gonna be so pissed when they find out...

Because we don't know if the universe was 'manufactured' or not, and can't simply assume one way or another.

SMall things need manufacturing, The Universe is too complex just to have come about by magic

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On what basis do you assume that rain or the water cycle are some kind of divine miracle? They're natural processes. We know how they work.

You know how they work. But can God control the "natural processes"?. Yes.

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For a given definition of 'intelligent', I'd revise that to: "there is intelligent life on Earth".

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No, but bees can create bees. We can and do create more humans.

That's not the point. What I'm trying to say is that Humans can create amazing things like telescopes, computers and so on... but yet cannot create something small like a bee - which can provide evidence for a creator who create's seperate things which humans cannot create.

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What you think is neither here nor there. Reality does not bend itself to our opinion of it.

Sorry, I meant "I know it is".

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Saying it doesn't make it so. As above, your opinions do not alter reality.

I know small things need a creator, and the creator must be even more complex. The Universe? Big and Complex, the Earth's perfect position which is travelling in an orbit constantley. Gravity being so finely tuned. This can provide evidence for God.

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Not all values of 'uncreated' necessarily equate to 'God'.

Not all values of 'uncreated' necessarily equate to 'the Universe'.

(I know you didn't say that ^^, but you do think that the Universe didn't have/need a creator, which therefore may put the conclusion: "The Universe always existed")

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Again, that's your opinion. Asserting it, however, does not make it so.

The human brain, with 6 million complex cells, each cell is equal to the most complex man-made computer. 6 Million complex man-made computers forming by chance, with emotion, love, evil.... Even one computer needs a creator, what about 6 million complex man-made computers?? no evidence of a higher being who did all this, which man cannot?? and for sure which, "Chance" cannot do.

I'll put it this way. Humans can create things which can look deeper into the creation of God. Humans can create amazing things, but things seperate like animals (which humans cannot create) were created by a higher being.

SMall things need manufacturing, The Universe is too complex just to have come about by magic

Who said anything about magic?

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On what basis do you assume that rain or the water cycle are some kind of divine miracle? They're natural processes. We know how they work.

You know how they work. But can God control the "natural processes". Yes.

Hypothetically, if there were such an entity, then it could control all "natural processes", but that's beside the point. Natural processes are not evidence of such an entity.

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That's not the point. What I'm trying to say is that Humans can create amazing things like telescopes, computers and so on... but yet cannot create something small like a bee - which can provide evidence for a creator who create's seperate things which humans cannot create.

Why would we assume a Creator who creates bees when we can readily explain the existence of bees by evolution from simpler life-forms?

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Sorry, I meant "I know it is".

I know small things need a creator, and the creator must be even more complex. The Universe? Big and Complex, the Earth's perfect position which is travelling in an orbit constantley.

The habitable zone isn't quite as finely defined as you might think, and as we know by examination of our own deep seas, life is apparently far more robust than we might have thought, too. Also, Earth is but one planet orbiting but one of the 10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 known stars in our universe. There are at least two, possibly three, planets in our Solar System that may have had the potential for life at one time or another. Who knows how many other star systems might support life? Who knows how widespread life might be?

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Gravity being so finely tuned.

On what basis do you make this assertion? On what basis do you think that gravity can work any other way than the way it does?

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Not all values of 'uncreated' necessarily equate to 'the Universe'.

Granted, but that doesn't give one license to assume 'God' either.

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The human brain, with 6 million complex cells, each cell is equal to the most complex man-made computer. 6 Million complex man-made computers forming by chance, with emotion, love, evil.... Even one computer needs a creator, what about 6 million complex man-made computers?? no evidence of a higher being who did all this, which man cannot?? and for sure which, "Chance" cannot do.

Evolution from simpler life-forms is not "chance". It may be complex, but chance it ain't.

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I'll put it this way. Humans can create things which can look deeper into the creation of God. Humans can create amazing things, but things seperate like animals (which humans cannot create) was created by a higher being.

Actually, now that I think of it, have Einstein or Hawking ever actually claimed that they believe a god is responsible for the universe's creation? I challenge this assertion.

The only thing I could find for Einstein is

"What really interests me is whether God had any choice in the creation of the world." --Albert Einstein

What about "God doesn't throw dice."

"Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind"

Also, Einstien was constantly thinking. To quote him at one moment of time when he could have had a different spiritual philosophy at a later moment of time, is irrelevant. Only Einstien knows what Einstien felt about it. All we can deduce is that he was a theist/deist sort of man, certainly not a strict atheist.

I do not believe in a personal God and I have never denied this but have expressed it clearly. If something is in me which can be called religious then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it. (Albert Einstein, 1954)

I believe in Spinoza's God who reveals himself in the orderly harmony of what exists, not in a God who concerns himself with the fates and actions of human beings. (Albert Einstein)

I cannot conceive of a God who rewards and punishes his creatures, or has a will of the kind that we experience in ourselves. Neither can I nor would I want to conceive of an individual that survives his physical death; let feeble souls, from fear or absurd egoism, cherish such thoughts. I am satisfied with the mystery of the eternity of life and with the awareness and a glimpse of the marvelous structure of the existing world, together with the devoted striving to comprehend a portion, be it ever so tiny, of the Reason that manifests itself in nature. (Albert Einstein, The World as I See It)

A man's ethical behaviour should be based effectually on sympathy, education, and social ties and needs; no religious basis is necessary. Man would indeed be in a poor way if he had to be restrained by fear of punishment and hope of reward after death.(Albert Einstein, "Religion and Science", New York Times Magazine, 9 November 1930)

Then there are the fanatical atheists whose intolerance is the same as that of the religious fanatics, and it springs from the same source . . . They are creatures who can't hear the music of the spheres. (The Expanded Quotable Einstein, Princeton University Press, 2000 p. 214)

However, if we discover a complete theory, it should in time be understandable by everyone, not just by a few scientists. Then we shall all, philosophers, scientists and just ordinary people, be able to take part in the discussion of the question of why it is that we and the universe exist. If we find the answer to that, it would be the ultimate triumph of human reason -- for then we should know the mind of God.

Hawking's God seems to be nothing more than a synonym for a unified theory. Ever the optimist, he apparently feels this goal is quite attainable, which tells me that it's not really God at all he's talking about.

Logged

I stopped believing for a little while this morning. Journey is gonna be so pissed when they find out...

It seems like he contradicts himself sometimes. But the Bible proves him wrong:

"In the beginning God created the Heavens and the Earth"

Einstein said he doesn't believe in a personal God but does believe in a sort of higher being (in his standards).

The Bible still proved him wrong.

Shakaib, would you stop trolling various threads with the same post? We are well aware the bible says Elohim created the heavens and earth. We are also aware that snakes and donkeys talked in the bible too. Just because someone wrote something proves nothing.